Ship today, update tomorrow: The modern tablet credo

Of all the major hardware players, Amazon seemed best equipped
to battle Apple in the tablet market.

Backed by Amazon's massive resources, an online store full of
content, and a very aggressive pricing strategy, the $200 Kindle Fire (which is not yet available in the UK but this is
around £129) appealed to any consumer unwilling to spend upwards of
£399 on an iPad 2. Pre-orders were through the roof.

Unfortunately, the Fire didn't deliver as expected. With a
sluggish user interface, a poorly designed screen size for magazine
viewing, and terrible performance in a browser that promised miracles, the Kindle Fire has left us
rattled. Is this really the device that's supposed to dethrone the
iPad 2?

Amazon answered criticisms on Monday (12 December) with a
solution that's become increasingly more common for tablet
manufacturers over the past year: the software update. "In less
than two weeks, we're rolling out an over-the-air update to the
Kindle Fire that will improve performance, touch navigation and
give customers the option to choose what items display on the
carousel," an Amazon spokeswoman told Wired.com in a statement.

We'll call it "ship today, update tomorrow". The trend began
earlier this year, when RIM first released its BlackBerry PlayBook tablet in April. After learning that the
PlayBook wouldn't ship with native email, contacts and calendar
apps, we all but pronounced the device D.O.A. But RIM continually
pledged a software update, along with all the promised apps in tow.
Nearly nine months later, the update is nowhere to be seen.

Similarly, HP shipped its TouchPad with a number of performance
issues, including a sluggish UI that often displays a "spinning
wheel of death"-type icon when the user launches too many apps at
once. HP also promised a series of updates that would improve
performance -- then, six weeks later, the company killed the tablet.

To be fair to these manufacturers, they're a year behind Apple
in the tablet arms race, and taking their sweet time isn't exactly
a luxury they can afford. The iPad beat everyone to
market, capturing some 93 percent of the market in the third
quarter of 2010. Today, the iPad still hovers somewhere in the 60
percent range as 2011 draws to a close.

"The level of competition is increasing, while sales and product
life cycles are decreasing," Gartner analyst Phillip Redman said in
an interview. "This puts a lot of pressure on companies to innovate
quickly in order to compete."

The problem is, when a manufacturer rushes a product to market,
consumers often suffer the brunt. Whether it means cutting corners
on user-experience testing, or fast-tracking hardware/software
integration between the device and its OS, a quick rush to market
is often self-defeating, leading to a speedy release of a
half-baked product.

"The good thing is that [over the air] firmware updates make
this possible," said NPD analyst Benjamin Arnold in an interview.
"But the bad news is that poor initial reviews can really hurt a
product launch."

Indeed, the PlayBook was almost universally
panned, while many bemoaned the TouchPad's hardware more than
its polished software. And while a number of critics went easy on
Amazon's Fire last month, we walked away unimpressed.

What's more, consumers generally aren't buying the "ship today,
update tomorrow" philosophy. RIM's tablet tanked -- the company
claimed it shipped just 200,000 PlayBooks during the first quarter of the
device's release (and note that "shipped" does not necessarily mean
"sold"). Compare that to Apple's iPad sales that quarter, a
reported 9.25
million units. And of course HP's now discontinued TouchPad
obviously went down in flames.

Unlike RIM and HP, however, Amazon looks like it has escaped any
real punitive damages of consumer criticism. For one thing, the
Kindle Fire costs only $200 (£129), a far cry from the $500 (£323)
starting points of many competitors. "With the Motorola Xoom at
$700-$800 (£452-£516), for instance, consumers expected a lot,"
said Forrester analyst Sarah Rotman Epps in a telephone interview.
"At a price point like the Kindle Fire has, consumers are willing
to be a lot more forgiving."

And Amazon has another ace up its sleeve: An online ecosystem
filled with content. The company currently hosts its own app store,
a vast repository of MP3s, and more than a million different ebooks
for sale. Contrasted with RIM's and HP's meager app store
offerings, Amazon's digital environment is flourishing. "It works
when you turn it on," says Rotman Epps, "and there's tons of
content on it to use. That's what people want."

To be sure, while the Fire doesn't perform very well in one's
hand, it seems to be doing well in terms of sales. While Amazon
won't share specific numbers (it never does), the company has taken
to promote the tablet as "the most successful product we've ever
launched," having sold "millions of units" since its launch in
November. Further, the company says it's continuing to build "more
to meet the strong demand," according to an Amazon spokeswoman.

Still, other manufacturers seem to have found the sweet spot in pricing strategies, with product price tags
hovering around the $200 (£129) range. If competition increases on
the low-end, glitchy product releases followed by apologetic
software updates may no longer cut it.

Indeed, Amazon may be preparing for as much. The company is
reportedly working on a more capable version of the Fire to come
the spring, according to The New York Times (Amazon declines to confirm or deny
this development).

Perhaps the next credo for tablets will be "ship the first
tablet today, ship the sequel tomorrow".